Thursday, June 07, 2012

A Noble Idea Gone Liberal…..

“Collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right wingers hate that.” - Janeane Garofalo

Once again, the lovely Ms Garofalo is as delusional as those who find her attractive. In their original design, Labor Unions were a noble idea. They were formed so that workers were not met with hazardous working conditions, exploitative labor practices that would be considered slavery in today’s world, share cropping, and the use of child labor. These are all things that the business world needed to be rid of. Nobody, regardless of political party affiliation, would argue against the abolishment of workplace abuse. The sleaziest guy you know would not vote to make sexual harassment a legal and encouraged part of workplace behavior any sooner than the meanest boss you’ve ever had would publicly endorse the horrors of slavery. Those were the people unions were originally designed to remove from the workforce. In their original design, unions gave the “little guy” a voice against the oppressive business owners who cared nothing about worker and everything about productivity. Well, guess what…..those people are gone and it has just as much to do with the evolution of business strategy as it does to do with union influence. Business owners value employee retention more in today’s workplace than ever before and that has helped to improve conditions in workplaces more than any union rule ever will. Office morale is a marketable amenity when hiring new talent. Unions had nothing to do with that revelation. You don’t keep good employees by abusing them into submission. Ironically, unions and their excessive regulations abuse business owners into keeping bad employees all the time.

Today’s labor unions are the most hell-bent special interest groups in all of American politics. They create victims, they breed dependency, and they provide more political influence than should have ever been allowed. They indoctrinate our children and they leave in their wake a path of destruction more gruesome than Nancy Pelosi without make-up…..in a bikini. Unions have delivered weakness to what should be some of the strongest pillars of America. It’s time to strip away their destructive presence and let the healing begin.

His Barackness and the rest of the “Free-Range Garofalos” out there need to dial back the potency of their medicinal marijuana if they believe unions saved the American Automotive Industry. If anything, unions were the disease that spread within the industry and brought it to its collective, bailout requiring, knees. Obama was just the Band-Aid that came along and stopped the bleeding. He didn’t cure, but he stopped the bleeding. That’s like a doctor putting bandages over a stab-wound, but leaving the knife in the victim and claiming he saved the man’s life. General Motors and Chrysler didn’t just wake up one day and realize that they had lost their imagination. Remember, that’s what Obama said in October of 2011? He said at a fundraiser (shocker) that Americans had “lost their imagination.” No, GM and Chrysler required federal assistance because unions had bled them dry. Enormous union pensions sucked up all the money but like a good thug, the unions demanded more. Even though their own rules prevented efficient and productive use of available labor, unions demanded more money that simply wasn’t there. Governor Walker of Wisconsin handed such ideology a crushing defeat on Tuesday, but even more fascinating than his enormous margin of victory is the fact that of the voters who cast their ballots for Governor Walker, 38% of them were from union households according to Edison Research. That should be a big eye opener to union leaders but I have no reason to believe such a revelation will complete its journey to reality. Where unions were once the liberator they have now become the brutal dictator.

America doesn’t want to be the victim. Unions demand loyalty just as liberalism demands loyalty. It’s no coincidence that the two find themselves in bed together so often. Unions lead their members to believe that prosperity, future, and health all depend exclusively upon continued loyalty to the union and all union causes. They work very hard to create a sense of “don’t try to understand dirty, old confusing politics on your own; that’s what you pay us for!” Just like entitlement programs, unions provide forced loyalty but eyes are beginning to open to that racket as well. People are beginning to realize that the voice they thought they were funding with their dues is not the voice they want to use. Members are starting to realize that they have been funding the addiction and they are now starting to cut off the unions from their supply. Just like an addict, the unions are starting to writhe and wiggle as they desperately search for that next fix. They lost Wisconsin but they have moved on quickly acting as if the loss was part of their plan all along.

Unions have infected our education system. Today’s NEA does not in any way reflect the idea of the teacher’s union that was founded in 1857 to give teachers a united and national voice. That union became the National Education Association in 1870. Its mission was a noble one. They aimed to provide the most up-to-date, uniform education to American youth as was available to them. By 1957, there were over 700,000 paying union members and corruption began to raise its ugly head. Today, the NEA uses membership dues to provide political influence. They use membership dues to intimidate and to defend the most horrific of teachers while discouraging and in some cases prosecuting passionate, non-tenured teachers who dared to connect with our kids in a non-sanctioned manner. Unions were not meant to be a political weapon.

The relationship between democrat and union is easy to understand when one realizes that democrats have turned your government into one, giant, union. Government unions, especially at the local level, are literally sucking the life out of this country. They create huge government programs requiring huge numbers of government, taxpayer funded jobs. They offer insane pay packages and unbeatable benefits in exchange for union support. In effect, many low-level government employees sell their soul for a government pay package and the ability to do minimal work for maximum benefit.

The whole idea of democracy and in essence, the United States of America, is that rule is provided “by the people.” If unions can influence the political landscape in a manner to which its dues paying membership may object, are those members still free? Are they truly receiving the full benefits of democracy if their vote is given against their consent? America cannot succeed until the crippling effects of union involvement are erased for good. There’s an enormous difference between sticking up for the “little guy” and telling the “little guy” that he’s too stupid to participate in America’s most precious process on his own. Unions are free to protect the worker to the extent that commerce is not hindered. They are free to protect the worker to the extent that their influence in politics is not greater than the voice of their membership. Sadly, that is exactly where we stand as a country today but on Tuesday night, Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Kleefisch landed the first of what I hope will be many, many devastating blows to the mentality of dependency in this country’s workforce. You don’t need a union, you need a country! Get it straight or get out.

Update February 9, 2009: The worldwide financial crisis has made it harder on banks and credit card companies are facing rising delinquency...

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